Opinion

Year in review: We countdown the most memorable moments of the 2025 water ski season

Year in Review: We Countdown the Most Memorable Moments of 2025

Articles

Year in review: We countdown the most memorable moments of the 2025 water ski season

Year in review: We countdown the most memorable moments of the 2025 water ski season

The moments that defined the 2025 water ski season – and the stories behind them.

By Jack Burden

Water skiing in 2025 was a year of rising performances and expanding possibility. Records fell, ceilings collapsed, and moments that once felt unimaginable became routine. From teenagers rewriting history to veterans redefining resilience, the season delivered a relentless stream of storylines that pushed the sport forward while constantly testing its limits. It was a year where brilliance arrived in waves, controversies lingered, and the level required to win climbed higher with every event.

Across the Waterski Pro Tour, WWS Overall Tour, IWWF world championships at every level, and legacy stages like Moomba and the U.S. Masters, the sport unfolded through breakthroughs, confrontations, and generational shifts. New rivalries ignited. Established orders were challenged. And in disciplines once thought to have plateaued, sudden surges forced a rethink of what elite performance truly means.

As we count down the most memorable moments of the 2025 season, this list captures more than just victories and records. It reflects a sport in full acceleration—deeper, bolder, and more competitive than ever—and the athletes who defined it when expectations were highest and the spotlight brightest.

Dominic Kuhn tricks at the 2025 University Worlds

Image: Joshua Devenie

10. Austria Takes Auckland

There’s always a particular optimism baked into the first major tournament of the season. The days grow longer, boats are dewinterized, and spring fever sets in. In recent years, that role has belonged to Moomba. But in 2025, the season’s opening statement came a week earlier—and from an unexpected corner of the calendar.

The University World Championships returned for the first time since 2016, staged in Auckland’s Orakei Basin, salt water shimmering in the heart of the city. The “Collegiate Worlds” brought together student-athletes from five continents, blending future stars, established pros, and wide-eyed newcomers thrilled to wear national colors. There were personal bests everywhere. There was Aaliyah Yoong Hannifah making history. And then there was Austria.

What the four Austrians pulled off bordered on absurd.

Against a Team USA contingent 14 strong—including a stacked six-skier A-team—Austria arrived with just four athletes. One was a single-event skier. Another, their strongest overall threat, withdrew at the last minute. There were no alternates. No safety nets. In tricks and jump, one misstep would have ended everything.

Instead, every skier delivered.

Luca Rauchenwald won jump outright. Lili Steiner claimed silver in jump and overall. Nikolaus Attensam posted the top men’s slalom score of prelims, maximizing team points. And Dominic Kuhn’s bronze in tricks—behind a field loaded with world champions—proved decisive.

In the 80-year history of IWWF world championships, only six nations had ever finished ahead of the United States. Only five had ever won a team title.

Make it six.

Undermanned, unflinching, and utterly fearless, Austria didn’t just win Auckland—they announced themselves. And in doing so, gave the 2025 season its first unforgettable moment.

World record holder Jake Abelson

Image: Johnny Hayward

9. The Race to 13k

There was a time when 13,000 points in men’s trick skiing felt like a myth. A ceiling. A number whispered with admiration, then dismissed with realism.

Enter Jake Abelson.

On a hot June weekend at Ski Fluid in central Florida, the 17-year-old American became the first skier in history to cross the barrier, posting 13,020 points. When the IWWF ratified the score, it didn’t just crown a new world record holder—it confirmed that trick skiing had entered a new era.

The milestone was years in the making. For nearly two decades, progress at the elite end of men’s tricks had been incremental, almost stagnant. Then came a surge. Patricio Font reignited the discipline in 2022. Matias Gonzalez raised the ceiling with relentless speed and precision. Suddenly, 12,000-point runs weren’t exceptional—they were the price of admission. In 2025, every men’s professional trick event was won with a score north of 12K.

The race to 13K was on.

Abelson got there first—but only just. Gonzalez and Font were right behind, pushing from different angles: Font with ruthless hand-pass efficiency, Gonzalez with audacious toe speed. And while Abelson claimed the milestone, the season’s most compelling moment came later.

At the World Championships in Recetto, with titles—not records—on the line, Gonzalez edged Abelson by ten points. Ten. The smallest possible margin in trick skiing. A single freeze-frame separating gold from silver.

In that sense, 13,000 wasn’t the finish line. It was proof of how narrow the margins have become.

The barrier fell. The chase went on.

Jon Travers slaloms at the 2025 Travers Grand Prix

Image: Bret Ellis

8. Travers Finale Shatters All Records

For decades, 10.25 meters—41 off—stood as men’s slalom’s final frontier. A pass reserved for the extraordinary, spoken about in reverent tones. By the time the sun set on the 2025 Travers Grand Prix, it felt like something else entirely: the new baseline.

At Sunset Lakes in Groveland, four different skiers ran 41 off a combined seven times, obliterating the previous record of four, set just two years earlier. It wasn’t an isolated spike, either. Across the back half of the season—World Championships, MasterCraft Pro, and now Travers—men’s titles have increasingly been decided at 9.75 meters (43 off). The ceiling didn’t just crack in 2025. It caved in.

Nate Smith and Charlie Ross had led the charge, but at the Grand Prix they were joined by Jonathan Travers and Freddie Winter, all four pushing through 41 and into rarified air. Winter went furthest when it mattered most, advancing to 43 and sealing both the event win and his first-ever Waterski Pro Tour season championship.

“This is the first season title I’ve ever won,” Winter said, emotion spilling over. “A year and a half ago I had a really terrible time, I hurt myself, and I worked really hard to come back… This one’s for everyone who helped me come back.”

The women matched the drama stride for stride. Regina Jaquess, Jaimee Bull, and Whitney McClintock Rini produced the first three-way tie at 41 off in waterski history, forcing a cold-start runoff at 10.75 meters. Jaquess prevailed on the water, but Bull walked away with the bigger prize—her fifth consecutive Pro Tour season title.

Seven 41s. Four skiers into 43. One unmistakable message: the sport’s limits are shifting, and fast.

@danielaverswyvelg of Colombia during the women’s trick during the IWWF U21 waterski championships at Predator Bay waterski club in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Image: Johnny Hayward

7. Controversial Calls in Calgary

Unfortunately, one of the most memorable moments of the 2025 season earned its place in this countdown for all the wrong reasons. The Under-21 World Championships in Calgary were meant to spotlight the sport’s next generation. Instead, they became a reminder that, at times, judging—not skiing—can define a championship.

Held at Predator Bay, the U21 Worlds delivered much of what the event promises: breakout performances, record scores, and glimpses of future world champions. But during the women’s trick final, the focus shifted abruptly from athletic brilliance to adjudication.

When Colombia’s Daniela Verswyvel had her reverse mobe—an 800-point, title-swinging trick—ruled no-credit, the reaction was immediate and explosive. Live chats lit up. Elite skiers voiced disbelief. Formal protests were filed in the aftermath by Colombia, Canada, and the United States. The call stood, awarding gold to Canada’s Hannah Stopnicki and leaving Verswyvel heartbroken.

To her credit, Stopnicki—a deserving champion who could easily have won the title without controversy on another day—handled the moment with grace, embracing Verswyvel in a tearful scene that captured both the beauty and brutality of elite sport. “I know the judges are looking at everything extra carefully,” Stopnicki said afterward. “I was just trying to be as clean as I could be.”

The controversy didn’t end with the medals. The IWWF World Waterski Council launched a formal review, with Chief Judge Felipe Leal concluding—supported by EyeTrick data—that the panel was “very strict but consistent.” The issue, he stressed, was an unusually high number of non-credit calls that left many athletes dissatisfied.

The fallout reached beyond Calgary. Ahead of the Open Worlds in Italy, the Council committed to judge clinics aimed at improving consistency and restoring trust.

In a week meant to celebrate the future, Calgary instead exposed a fault line the sport can’t ignore. Trick judging, for all its tools and systems, remains far less objective than we’d like to believe.

The Victorian Water Ski Association proudly presents the BIGGEST & BEST Waterski Tournament in the world

Image: Moomba Masters

6. The Moomba That Launched a New Generation

The 64th Moomba Masters on Melbourne’s Yarra River wasn’t just another stop on the pro circuit—it was the crucible in which a new generation of champions was forged. Across the festival’s six professional events, four were won by first-time champions, setting the stage for breakthrough seasons.

In men’s tricks, 17-year-old Jake Abelson claimed his first professional victory, topping the highest-scoring podium in history. Moomba proved the launchpad for a meteoric season: Abelson went on to win the three largest prize-purse events, break the 13,000-point mark, and finish 2025 as the sport’s most dominant trick skier, despite a narrow World Championships defeat.

Slalom followed a similar trajectory. Nineteen-year-old Charlie Ross secured his first pro title with veteran composure, then rode that momentum to two pro wins, seven top-five finishes, U21 World Championships gold, and a silver at the Open Worlds—emerging as a genuine threat to Nate Smith and Freddie Winter for years to come.

The jump event crowned Joel Poland, returning from his Australian ban, as Moomba champion for the first time, launching an undefeated six-win season in men’s jump—a feat not achieved by any man since Freddy Krueger in 2006. Brittany Greenwood Wharton also claimed her debut professional victory, kicking off a season that included five podiums and a runner-up finish at the World Championships.

By the time the fireworks lit up Monday night’s jump finals, Moomba 2025 had delivered more than victories. Record-breaking performances, first-time champions, and a rising crop of elite athletes signaled a shift in the sport’s competitive landscape, reaffirming why the Moomba Masters remains water skiing’s ultimate proving ground.

Charlie Ross slaloms at the 2025 World Championships

Image: Johnny Hayward

5. Ross and Smith Runoff for the Crown

The 2025 World Championships delivered countless historic moments, but perhaps none more electrifying than the men’s slalom final in Recetto—a showdown that redefined what elite slalom looks like.

When Nate Smith, one of the most reliable closers in water skiing history, posted one at 9.75m (43 off) skiing fourth off the dock, it seemed the title was settled. But over an hour later, 20-year-old Charlie Ross left the dock and matched him—forcing a sudden-death runoff for the world championship. For the first time in World Championships history, two skiers had to attempt 10.25m (41 off) cold, with gold on the line.

It was a generational collision. Smith, the standard-bearer of modern slalom. Ross, the breakout force of the year. Smith prevailed in the runoff, but the result felt secondary to the message: the gap had closed.

“I’ve never even tried 41 off the dock in practice,” Smith admitted afterward. “A lot goes through your head… but yeah, I’m pretty happy.”

The drama didn’t end in Italy. Weeks later, at the very next pro slalom event, Ross and Smith found themselves locked together again—tied once more at 43 off. Another runoff. Another razor-thin separation. Different venue, same script.

Back-to-back ties at the hardest line length in the sport, across two of the biggest stages of the season, felt less like coincidence and more like a turning point. Smith still claimed the crown, but Ross had firmly announced himself as his equal.

In a season defined by record-breaking depth and shrinking margins, no moment captured water skiing’s new reality quite like this one: the champion tested, the challenger confirmed, and a rivalry forged buoy by buoy at 43 off.

The rivalry that defined the season: Neilly Ross vs. Erika Lang

Images: Thomas Gustafson

4. Lang vs. Ross Takes Tricking to the Next Level

If 2025 has a defining rivalry, it has to be Erika Lang versus Neilly Ross. Lang started the season seemingly untouchable, going undefeated across Moomba, Swiss Pro Tricks, and the Masters, reclaiming the world record from Ross, and setting the tone for a dominant year.

Ross, meanwhile, looked out of sorts early on, traveling the globe and honing her craft in a grueling schedule that included competing in the men’s field in Monaco. It took six pro events, but in Portugal she finally broke through, clinching her first win of the season and nearly matching world record form—a statement that she was back.

The rivalry erupted at Botaski. Lang set a pending world record in the prelims, only for Ross to tie the current record in the finals, forcing Lang to chase a second world record just to win. Every trick, every frame, every point counted. Ross’ victory marked her first major triumph in three years and signaled a shift: Lang’s dominance was no longer assured.

The drama carried into the World Championships in Recetto, where both women arrived in red-hot form. Once again, victory was decided by a hair’s breadth, with Ross’ late-season momentum peaking at the perfect moment. Two athletes, pushing the limits of skill and precision, raised the standard for women’s trick skiing, making every pass a spectacle and every point a headline.

Lang remains one of the most successful women in the modern era, but Ross has proven she can match, and even surpass, the best—turning a personal comeback into one of the sport’s most thrilling storylines and taking women’s trick skiing to an entirely new level.

@teamcanski world overall champion @dorienllewellyn during the 2025 IWWF World Waterski Championships at Parco Nautico del Sesia in Novara, Italy.

Image: Johnny Hayward

3. The Overall Saga

The men’s overall battle at the 2025 World Championships was the closest since 2009’s legendary three-way standoff, pitting Canada’s Dorien Llewellyn against defending champion Louis Duplan-Fribourg in a clash of precision, power, and pedigree.

The tournament began with a shock: Joel Poland, the sport’s most consistent tricker and early favorite, stumbled in the prelims. One front flip gone awry ended his flawless streak. Poland’s misstep became arguably the defining moment of the Worlds, a reminder that even the greatest can falter on the biggest stage.

From there, the men’s overall title came down to a hair. Duplan-Fribourg dominated tricks, setting the top score, and matched his personal best in slalom—but was penalized after a video gate review nullified his 10.75m pass, leaving him just 13 points behind Llewellyn. Every move counted.

Llewellyn, aiming to secure the title in the trick final, miscued on a landing and sank in disbelief, keeping the championship undecided. It all came down to jump. Duplan-Fribourg needed just 70 centimeters more to snatch the crown but came up short. In a performance echoing his 2021 duel with Joel Poland, Llewellyn soared 69.9 meters (229 feet), his best jump in years.

With that leap, Dorien Llewellyn followed in his father’s footsteps, claiming the World Overall title and cementing his place among water skiing royalty.

The 2025 World Championships proved that in overall competition, margins are measured in centimeters—and legends are defined by their ability to seize—or survive—the smallest of moments.

Freddie Winter 🏆MASTERS SLALOM CHAMPION 🏆

Image: Bret Ellis

2. Winter Returns; Cooler than Ever

If Hollywood scripted a comeback, could it have been as dramatic as Freddie Winter’s at the 2025 U.S. Masters? Less than a year after shattering his femur in Monaco and missing most of 2024, the two-time world slalom champion returned to Robin Lake with history, expectations, and personal demons stacked against him. Winter’s fraught relationship with the Masters added another layer: banned in 2023 after an emotionally charged judging dispute, he had unfinished business on the event’s storied waters.

When the dust settled on Saturday’s brutal semifinals, the veterans were gone, leaving Winter as one of the few household names in the final. Last off the dock, chasing a lead set by Nate Smith, he hurled himself outside of three ball with trademark fearlessness. When the spray settled, Winter had done it—his first professional victory since his injury, his third Masters title, and arguably the most satisfying of his career. “Probably the most emotional moment of my life,” he said afterward. “So much self-doubt and fear I wouldn’t get back here over the last 10 months and 29 days.”

The Masters wasn’t just a singular triumph. It set the tone for the rest of Winter’s season: a string of consistent performances that saw him claim the Waterski Pro Tour title, rack up four pro victories (tying Nate Smith), and lead the year-end podium count. Though perhaps not fully back at 100 percent, Winter had reclaimed his place among the sport’s elite, proving that even after a potentially career ending injury, he could still define the men’s slalom narrative.

At Robin Lake, Freddie Winter reminded the water skiing world: the best stories aren’t just about victories—they’re about the journey to get there.

@joelpoland jumps during the 2025 IWWF World Waterski Championships at Parco Nautico del Sesia in Novara, Italy.

Image: Johnny Hayward

1. Jump Fest in Recetto

Across the sport, each new year seems to push performances to new and unprecedented heights. At many events, it has become commonplace for skiers to challenge—or even break—world records to clinch victory. It is, by almost any measure, a remarkable era to be a water ski fan.

One discipline, however, has largely resisted that trend. Jumping, with fewer events and shrinking opportunities, has seen its depth thin and top-end performances plateau. The concerning reality is that jump distances have not meaningfully improved this century and, by several metrics, have begun to decline.

All of which made what unfolded in Italy at this year’s World Championships all the more remarkable.

The tone was set in the opening days. Brandon Schipper arrived off a long-haul flight, skipped familiarization, and promptly unleashed the biggest jumps of his career. He wasn’t alone. Across the early rounds, season-bests and lifetime bests fell like dominoes. By week’s end, the cut to make the men’s jump final was the highest in World Championships history.

The finals delivered the crescendo. On the women’s side, personal bests stacked quickly—Maise Jacobsen and Aaliyah Yoong Hannifah both breaking 50 meters for the first time, with the entire top five clearing 170 feet. Brittany Greenwood Wharton, capping a career-best season, produced her longest jump in years to set the target. Hanna Straltsova, unflappable as ever, needed just two jumps to defend her title and complete another golden double.

Then came the men’s final—chaos, courage, and generational turnover wrapped into one shoreline spectacle. Eighteen-year-old Tim Wild, fresh off his first-ever 60-meter jump days earlier, flew 68.1m to announce himself on the sport’s biggest stage. Eight men cracked 220 feet. Schipper, giddy after another personal best, tapped home early, almost disbelieving what he’d just unleashed.

But the crown belonged to Joel Poland. His opening leap—72.1m, a personal best and new European record—froze the crowd. He passed his remaining jumps, gambling it would hold. It did. Ryan Dodd chased, cleared 70, and fell just short. With that, a three-decade lineage of North American jump dominance quietly ended.

In a discipline that had seemed stuck in neutral, Recetto felt like liftoff. Against every recent trend, jump delivered depth, drama, and distances that forced a recalibration of what was possible. Perhaps there is new life in water ski jumping after all.

Honorable Mentions

  • Aaliyah Yoong Hannifah’s triple-gold performance at the University World Championships, the first world titles ever won by an Asian competitor.
  • Tim Wild’s historic clean sweep at the Junior Masters—the first by a male skier in the event’s history.
  • Hanna Straltsova breaking the longest-standing record in the sport, by less than a third of an overall point.
  • Charlie Ross running 10.25m (41 off) at two different tournaments on the same day, breaking Will Asher’s 22-year-old collegiate record and tying for the lead at a professional event in the process.
  • Joel Poland setting yet another world record in professional competition to clinch the WWS Overall Tour season title.

Tim Wild and Matt Rini at the 2025 Jr. Masters

Nautique Flips Decades of Tradition at Flagship Junior Events

Articles

Nautique flips decades of tradition at flagship junior events

Tim Wild and Matt Rini at the 2025 Jr. Masters

Nautique announced that the under-17 division will be sunset at the Masters next year (image: @bearwitnesssportsphotos.)

By Jack Burden

Within all the excitement of Nautique’s recent launch of the Water Ski World Series, one of the most consequential changes slipped through almost unnoticed. The new Series isn’t just for the pros—embedded within it are junior and senior competitions, and a quiet but unmistakable message from Nautique: for Correct Craft, the future of the sport is under-21.

Junior competition has been part of water skiing since the sport started categorizing itself. In the United States, the Jr. Boys division debuted at the fourth National Championships in 1946, giving young talent a structured path upward. Hall of Famer Dick Pope Jr. won Jr. Boys overall at 16 in 1947, then jumped straight to the men’s ranks and immediately began piling up national and world titles. Internationally, Europe launched its under-17 Championships in 1964, and the Under-17 Worlds followed in 1986.

For eight decades, under-17 has been synonymous with “junior”—the proving ground where future superstars were minted.

Then Nautique quietly took a sledgehammer to it.

Hidden near the bottom of their Series announcement was the line that changed everything: the Junior Masters would no longer be junior. Under-21 would replace it entirely. And it wasn’t a one-off. Moomba is doing the same in 2026, adding under-21 alongside the pros and the under-17s. The three other World Series stops will follow suit. With a single keystroke, a whole generation was reassigned.

Nautique framed the shift as modernization—a cleaner system, a clearer pathway. But inside the sport, the reaction has been anything but unanimous. For many coaches and families, the change feels less like progress and more like erasing a pillar the sport was built on.

Corey Vaughn is one of them.

“Under-17 skiers are true juniors and can be seen as the future of the sport,” shared Vaughn, a career coach of over 10 years. “By the age of 20–21, some of the top talent has ‘arrived’ and there is too much potential overlap.”

Reflecting on his own pupils, he added that opportunities like the Junior Masters were “empowering experiences at a perfect time of life. Very motivating. I’m sorry to see that change.”

So why make the change?

We asked Nautique for comment. They didn’t respond. Their FAQ stayed polished and corporate, leaning on phrases like “greater access” and “modernization.” The most substantive line was their aim to give juniors “additional time and experience before transitioning to the pro divisions.”

Which points to a deeper tension: nobody agrees on when a young skier should actually turn pro.

Take Tim Wild. At 18, he might already be one of the best overall skiers in the world. In 2025 he swept the Junior Masters, won the under-21 Worlds, and took a podium at the open Worlds—and yet he’s entered only a single pro event in his life, a small backyard trick event. On paper he’s a world-class pro. In practice he’s an overqualified junior. And that makes sense. Juniors give him reps. They give him confidence. They give him hardware.

This is common among Matt Rini’s protégés. Joel Poland didn’t debut as a pro until 20, choosing to dominate juniors until he felt ready to step into a field of grown men. Rini—a Nautique insider—was almost certainly influential in pushing the junior age higher.

But contrast Wild with Jake Abelson. Same age, same generation, completely different trajectory. Abelson earned his first pro podium at 12 and has spent years terrorizing the junior ranks while poaching wins from adults. He’s proof that success is possible while keeping a foot in both worlds.

Water skiing is one of the few sports where you can win a junior title in the morning and beat the pros by dinner. It makes for great stories. It also makes the definition of “pro” feel slightly absurd.

“In broad terms, I really wish we had a stronger boundary between professional and amateur skiing,” Vaughn added. “I’m amazed by the talent of these kids, but I don’t think the likes of Jake Abelson and Charlie Ross should get their chance at winning open—where they clearly belong—and then go clean house in the amateur ranks. You wouldn’t let a 20-year-old drafted into the NBA also play college ball.”

Today, athletes like Abelson can hop divisions freely. Governing bodies, whose marquee events are amateur, have every incentive to keep things blurry.

That freedom is beautiful. But it’s also chaos.

So Nautique responded to the chaos with structure: create a middle zone. Build a bridge for the 18–21-year-old phase, the years when the sport tends to lose more athletes than it develops. Under-21 isn’t a new format—Europe has run Championships since 1990, the PanAm Games debuted it in 1996, and the IWWF launched under-21 Worlds in 2003. America is the outlier. This move brings the sport’s major events in line with a global trend.

A strong under-21 circuit could give young adult skiers something they’ve never truly had: meaningful pressure without inevitable defeat.

But every structural change creates winners and losers.

We asked Matteo Luzzeri—who has coached many of Europe’s top juniors—whether a stronger under-21 focus helps the sport.

“I don’t know,” he said after some thought. “Given the high level of youth skiers—Mati, Jake, Tim, Charlie, Lucas, Axel, Maise, Christhiana—the opposite argument could be made: Under-17 is more necessary now than it used to be.”

This is the paradox of governance: every attempt to help one group seems to hurt another.

Men’s tricks might not need an amateur under-21 division when half the pro podiums are filled by teenagers who can’t yet vote. But in slalom and jump? Different story. Outside of men’s tricks, only Charlie Ross won a pro event this year as an under-21, and only four under-21 athletes made a podium at all. For most young skiers, the pro ranks are a long stretch of non-finals, non-money, and non-momentum. A purgatory measured by rope lengths.

So maybe Nautique is right. Maybe this is the way to build the next generation of stars: give them battles they can win now, not scars they’ll carry later.

But it’s also possible the line between amateur and pro gets even fuzzier. That under-17 athletes lose the stage they once dreamed about. That the next breakout skier arrives later—and to a smaller spotlight.

The thing about format changes is that the impact doesn’t show up immediately. You feel it in three years, or five. When the under-21 podiums are deep—or empty. When pro fields get tougher—or thinner. When a 16-year-old who should’ve skied Robin Lake never gets the chance.

This is the part nobody can model.

Nautique has placed its bet on a vision of the future: a broader bridge, a longer runway, a gentler ascent. The logic is easy enough to understand. The consequences are not.

Change in water skiing rarely arrives with fireworks. It shows up in a rulebook tweak, an age cutoff, a field list. A small shift in gravity.

And suddenly, the next generation stands somewhere slightly different than we expected.

Welcome to the Multiverse

Inside the Water Ski Multiverse: Nautique’s Power Play Begins

Articles

Inside the Water Ski Multiverse: Nautique’s Power Play Begins

Welcome to the Multiverse

A sport cut down the middle.

By Jack Burden

Welcome to the water ski multiverse. We now live in a sport where everything is happening everywhere, all at once.

Many will ask whether a tiny, fractured niche sport really needed a third professional tour. Whether further splitting an already bloated and incoherent global calendar is remotely helpful. Whether everyone couldn’t just sit down, act like adults, and pull in the same direction for once.

But like it or not, the future is here. And for many pro skiers, it’s spelled N-A-U-T-I-Q-U-E.

For years, Nautique has been the lifeblood of elite skiing. They held the IWWF towboat contract for a decade—pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the federation. They kept the sport’s two crown jewels, the Moomba Masters and the U.S. Masters, alive through recessions, pandemics, and every imaginable governance meltdown. They’ve backed more athletes, more consistently, and more generously than anyone else.

And now, with their World Series of Water Skiing, they are injecting more money into professional skiing than all of the events on the Waterski Pro Tour and the WWS Overall Tour combined. It is the single largest investment in pro skiing in over twenty years.

Some in the sport cheered. Others felt the move like a bottle thrown across a quiet bar.

Because this is happening in a sport already stretched to breaking point. A sport where infighting and turf battles drain whatever oxygen remained. A sport that can’t agree on what its professional product is—let alone how to sell it.

The truth is that pro events have been propped up by private pockets, passion projects, and a politely disguised wealth-redistribution scheme in which the entry fees of lower-ranked skiers become prize money for the best. Everyone knows this. Everyone pretends not to.

In 2025, only ten skiers earned enough prize money to rise above the U.S. food-stamp line. Only five beat a full-time minimum-wage worker in Florida. That’s the economic reality behind the illusion of professionalism.

The Waterski Pro Tour was supposed to fix that. When it launched in 2021, it felt like a correction years overdue: athlete-led, narrative-driven, and structured enough to make sense of a notoriously incoherent landscape. For a moment, it worked. A wave of new events emerged. Those events gained legitimacy simply by being part of something bigger. Fans had a story to follow. Athletes had a season to chase.

But momentum disguised rot. The number of events rose, but prize money didn’t. More events meant less industry engagement, as limited marketing budgets were stretched thin. More weekends meant athletes couldn’t keep up. If you can’t make a living skiing—and you can’t—you need a day job. If you need a day job, you can’t chase tournaments across continents.

What emerged was a fractured field where some of the sport’s biggest names—Nate Smith, Regina Jaquess, Erika Lang—competed sparingly, their absences eroding the Pro Tour’s ability to crown a meaningful champion.

The Pro Tour needed substance, sponsors, and structure. What it had was a veneer: a brand lacquered over twenty-odd independent events, no real control over any of them, and no unified commercial product to sell.

Nautique is a company built on consolidation and control. It was never sold on the Pro Tour. They declined to include their flagship events from the outset and slowly leaned on the other events they sponsored to pull out one by one.

And so the World Series arrived. Without the IWWF towboat contract, Nautique needed a new platform to showcase their product—and suddenly had the budget to build it.

If the launch feels like a declaration of war, maybe it is. But history says progress rarely arrives without stepping on someone’s toes. In 1984, the Coors Light Water Ski Tour was born into a similarly scattered landscape. Over the prior decade, volunteers had pieced together a loose constellation of pro events across the United States. Then MasterCraft’s CEO launched an organized, centralized Tour. The American Water Ski Association fought it. They even tried to create a rival Tour in response. Some existing events joined the new Tour; others stayed outside and slowly faded.

We speak about that era with reverence now, but it was never universally adored. Long-running events went bankrupt under its competitive shadow. The Masters was dragged into professionalism kicking and screaming. Governing bodies resented losing control. And twice in the 1990s, athletes built rival tours out of frustration.

Yet through that conflict, skiing soared. The bull-in-a-china-shop approach taken by Rob Shirley and his successors put the sport on the map.

The parallels to Nautique’s move are almost uncomfortable. A single manufacturer launching a well-funded circuit. Independent events overshadowed. A governing body uneasy about losing control. A sport caught between centralization and chaos.

The significance of Nautique’s new tour isn’t the number of events. It’s the caliber. Five stops with genuinely deep prize pools and the full weight of Nautique’s athlete roster behind them will dominate the season. These will be the strongest fields, the highest stakes, the tournaments with consequences. That’s a new center of mass in a small universe. The kind of gravity that rewrites every orbit.

And for the Waterski Pro Tour, it means being nudged toward the cold edge of the map. Signs of strain have already surfaced: burnout among leadership, stalled content, a shrinking calendar. A schedule that risks becoming a regional slalom series, not a global showcase. Losing the sport’s most important events doesn’t kill the Pro Tour, but it guts its claim to legitimacy.

None of this means Nautique’s series is a revolution. Four of its five events already existed and were already among the sport’s highest-purse stops. The real change is the branding, the consolidation, and the clarity of intent. Nautique has given a name—and a narrative spine—to the shadow circuit they’ve been running for half a decade.

The danger isn’t Nautique doing this. It’s the sport doing nothing else.

Because adding more events with prize purses that barely cover travel isn’t a strategy. It’s noise. Nautique wants fewer, bigger, richer. Quality over quantity.

Well, that’s not exactly true either. Nautique’s goal is simple: sell boats. They believe the best path to that is a closed circuit they control—one built around their pros, aspirational juniors, and even a revived Big Dawg series.

Time will tell how long the sport can survive with three competing tours. Whether the Waterski Pro Tour can stage a comeback. Whether Nautique’s World Series can capture fans’ imagination. Where the WWS Overall Tour fits in any of this.

But this is the part where someone usually promises that competition breeds innovation, that conflict is healthy, that chaos is just the prelude to clarity. Maybe. But it’s just as possible we’re watching the sport split into its separate realities for good—each with its own logic, its own loyalties, its own gravitational pull.

Nautique has drawn its line. The Pro Tour is wobbling on its axis. The rest of the sport is left choosing which version of the future it wants to believe in.

That’s the multiverse we live in now.
And like any multiverse, only one timeline survives.

Axel Garcia tricks during the IWWF U21 waterski championships at Predator Bay waterski club in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Axel Garcia: The King of the Half Jack

Articles

Axel Garcia: The King of the Half Jack

Axel Garcia tricks during the IWWF U21 waterski championships at Predator Bay waterski club in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Axel Garcia tricks during the IWWF U21 waterski championships (image: @bearwitnesssportsphotos)

By Jack Burden

When the conversation turns to innovation in modern trick skiing, it almost always starts with Joel Poland. The multitalented Brit has made “super flips” part of the sport’s everyday vocabulary, turning his signature super-mobe-five into a tournament staple.

But there’s another name worth saying—one rising fast.

Seventeen-year-old Axel Garcia of France has been quietly building a résumé that demands attention. Third at last year’s Under-17 Worlds behind Mati Gonzalez and Jake Abelson. Multiple-time European champion. Top seed into the finals at the recently concluded Under-21 World Championships.

And above all, he’s developed a reputation for one thing: launching himself into frontflips with the kind of style and ease that makes fellow skiers double-take.

Among elite trick skiers, Garcia has been dubbed by some as the “King of the Half Jack.” The half jack—named after American skier Kevin Jack—is a frontflip variation where the skier edges into the wake from an inverted back position before throwing the flip. It’s a close cousin to the wakeboard “tantrum” and has quietly become one of the most common moves in top-level runs. These days, a mobe–reverse–half jack combo is almost as standard as a side slide.

Some, like world record holder Jake Abelson, still favor the more orthodox BFF (frontflip from a regular back position), but that’s becoming rare. The half jack’s speed, consistency, and smooth transition make it the go-to choice.

Garcia hasn’t just mastered it—he’s reinvented it. In 2023, he submitted a clip of himself landing a reverse FFLF, which the IWWF approved as a brand-new trick.

Recently, he posted an Instagram video that made waves: both regular and reverse FFLFs, plus both regular and reverse FFLBBs (frontflip 360s), all starting from the inverted back like a half jack. The reverse FFLBB isn’t even in the rulebook yet—but if Garcia submits it, he could add another flip to the official trick list.

Top names took notice. Pato Font, Mati Gonzalez, and Neilly Ross all jumped into the comments with praise.

Garcia’s skillset is a case study in a long-running debate: whether the IWWF’s trick scoring table needs an overhaul.

Take backflips. Progressing from a basic backflip (BFL) to a backflip 540 (BFL5F) is worth 350 more points—about a 70% increase. But frontflips? A basic FFL is worth 800 points. The 540-degree version (FFL5F) gets just 150 more—less than a 20% bump.

Why? Because of an arbitrary 1,000-point ceiling. Years ago, the double backflip was set at that max value, despite no skier ever landing it. Since then, every trick has had to fit between 500 and that cap, squeezing the spread for higher-difficulty frontflips into a narrow range.

The result: Garcia gains little by throwing his most jaw-dropping tricks. At the Under-21 Worlds, he topped the prelim leaderboard with a run of safe, fast mobes, half-twists, and just two frontflips. Why risk a reverse half jack or a front-full for an extra 100–150 points when a 750-point half-twist is cleaner and safer?

He’s not alone. Abelson regularly posts outrageous frontflips online—no-wake FFLBs, front-fulls from a regular wrap—that never see a start dock in competition. Pato Font has ski-line and spin variations that would make even Cory Pickos jealous. Every top trick skier has an ace or two they leave at home on tournament day.

Part of the reason is difficulty: in trick skiing, you can’t afford an early fall. Speed and consistency win. That’s not a flaw—it’s part of what makes the sport thrilling. But with a different point spread, more of those “party tricks” could become prime-time tricks.

Axel Garcia is exactly the kind of skier trick skiing’s future needs—innovative, fearless, and stylish. His flips are already redefining what’s possible off a ski wake, even if the scorebook hasn’t caught up.

For now, his wildest moves might remain for Instagram. But if the sport wants its brightest stars to keep pushing the limits, it needs to make sure the risk is worth the reward.

Because Garcia may not just be the King of the Half Jack—he might be next in line for the whole trick skiing crown.

Get ready to watch Wakeboard, Wakesurf, and Cable Wakeboard, all taking place in Chengdu, China, from August 7–17, 2025.

Water Skiing Just Lost the World Games. Maybe We Deserved It.

News

Water skiing just lost the World Games. Maybe we deserved it.

Get ready to watch Wakeboard, Wakesurf, and Cable Wakeboard, all taking place in Chengdu, China, from August 7–17, 2025.

Wakeboard, Wakesurf, and Cable Wakeboard, all took place in Chengdu, China, from August 7–17, 2025 (image: IWWF)

By Jack Burden

The knives are out for the IWWF. They always are. This time, it’s over water skiing’s absence from the 2025 World Games in Chengdu. Forty-plus years of tradition gone, replaced by wakesurfing’s debut. Another bureaucratic misstep? Another case of bad leadership? That’s the easy take — and the one our sport seems most eager to reach for.

You’ve heard the grumbling: How could they let this happen? Don’t they know water skiing was one of the Games’ founding sports? We take it personally because it feels personal — a door slammed in our face after decades of loyal attendance. And yes, the decision was made in consultation with the IWWF. And yes, the optics are ugly. But let’s not pretend this was a bolt from the blue.

The World Games is a product, not a sentimental reunion. It exists to fill stadiums, sell tickets, and justify broadcast time. In that context, swapping three-event skiing for wakesurfing isn’t madness — it’s arithmetic. Wakesurfing needs less infrastructure. It plays better in urban venues. It comes with a soundtrack and an image package you can sell on TikTok. And China, our host, has a ready-made roster of wake athletes but exactly zero active three-event skiers. The organizers didn’t choose wakesurfing to spite us. They chose it because it fits their event better than we do.

Here’s the harder question: why wouldn’t we fit?

For years, our competitive structure has been almost aggressively insular. Our tournaments are for us. Our coverage is by us. Our audience is… well, mostly us. Many in the sport barely flinched when the news broke. The World Games? Please. It’s an outcasts’ Olympics, they say — full of fringe and gimmicky sports nobody watches unless they stumble across them on TV.

But that’s exactly the point. The World Games gave us legitimacy in the wider sporting world. In more than a few countries, national federations used our place in the Games to justify government funding. And when was the last time water skiing got real terrestrial TV coverage? For those still pining for the ESPN Hot Summer Nights era, this was as close as we’d come in decades. Now it’s gone.

Wakesports have embraced spectacle and accessibility; we’ve clung to purity and tradition as if they were a form of currency the real world still accepts. They aren’t. Not to the World Games, and not to any outside partner who needs more than nostalgia to justify a slot.

So, yes, the IWWF could have fought harder. Maybe they should have. But what exactly were they supposed to fight with? A product that hasn’t been meaningfully reimagined in decades? A fan base that barely exists outside our own families and training partners? A sport whose public face is often a locked gate to a private lake? That’s not leverage. That’s a liability.

And now we’re talking about the Olympics. “We are actively bidding for inclusion in Brisbane in 2032… we might have an actual chance to get in there,” IWWF President Jose Antonio Perez Priego said recently. Encouraging words — but when your most recent headline is We just lost the World Games, it’s hardly the kind of momentum you want for an Olympic pitch.

The truth is we weren’t pushed out — we drifted out. Slowly. By choice. By choosing to play only to ourselves. By defining “success” as keeping the same people happy instead of adding new ones. By treating the outside world as a distraction rather than an opportunity.

If losing the World Games feels like a punch to the gut, it should. But don’t waste your energy swinging at the IWWF. This isn’t a one-off scheduling decision. It’s a preview of our future if we keep doing exactly what we’ve been doing.

Because if we want to stop losing places — at the World Games, in media coverage, in the public imagination — we’re going to have to start competing off the water as fiercely as we do on it. Otherwise, this won’t be the last goodbye. It’ll just be the latest.

Erika Lang throws a frontflip

How Much Is a Trick Worth?

Articles

How much is a trick worth?

As the World Championships near, trick skiing faces a quiet reckoning

Erika Lang throws a frontflip

Trick skiers, like world record holder Erika Lang, have redefined what was though possible in the sport (image: @erikalang36)

By Jack Burden

As the World Championships approach, a quiet but consequential debate is coming to a head: how much is a trick really worth?

At stake is the very structure of trick skiing’s scoring system—a rigid points table that hasn’t fundamentally changed in more than two decades. For athletes like world record holder Joel Poland, that’s no longer acceptable.

“The point values for high-difficulty flips are crippling trick skiing,” Poland told the IWWF Water Ski Council. “It’s limiting what athletes can do.”

Poland should know. Two of his most innovative tricks—the 900-point “UFO” and the 950-point “Matrix”—were recently approved for competition but, in his own words, are “tricks you’ll never see in a tournament” unless something changes. He’s not alone in that sentiment.

A Broken Balance

Trick skiing is unique among board sports: every maneuver has a fixed value, from 40-point surface turns to 950-point flips. The goal is objective scoring. The result? Homogeny.

“Right now the trick point values reward doing more tricks versus doing harder tricks,” said Brooks Wilson on the GrabMatters podcast. “You can get more tricks in because you’re going fast. It’s a speed game.”

That tradeoff—efficiency over difficulty—has shaped elite competition. Instead of variety, most skiers now converge on the same sequence of reliable, high-value tricks.

“We want to see variation,” added Freddie Winter. “Instead, everyone’s forced to do the same kind of runs.”

The Repetition Problem

An analysis of over 100 score sheets at the 2023 World Championships shows just how narrow the tricking landscape has become.

Among hand tricks, backflips dominate. The half twist (BFLB), worth 750 points, appeared in every finalist’s run—typically paired with its reverse. In contrast, the only other trick worth 750, the ski-line seven back, was attempted just once.

The mobe (BFLBB), worth 800 points, was nearly as common, performed by three-quarters of the finalists—far outpacing other tricks in its point range. The basic backflip remains a staple, especially among intermediate-level skiers, tricks worth comparable points, such as W7B, SLBB, and SL5s, were attempted much less often and with much lower success.

Toe tricks show a similar pattern. Toe back-to-backs (TBB) are ubiquitous, appearing in 112 of 117 toe runs (the exceptions were early falls). Toe wake back-to-backs were also incredibly common; the regular and its reverse featured in every single finalist’s toe run. Toe wake tricks worth comparable points, such as TWO or TWLB, were less common, although some of this stems from them not having an easy reverse.

Misaligned Incentives

Not all frequently performed tricks are necessarily overvalued—some, like backflips, may be common because they serve as foundational building blocks for higher-scoring flips. And in toe runs, the inherent physical limitations naturally result in a narrower pool of viable tricks and sequences.

But some mismatches are hard to ignore. Why does the toe wake back-to-back (TWBB) score more than the toe wake 360 (TWO), despite similar difficulty? Why is the mobe front-to-front, attempted only three times at the tournament, valued the same as the standard mobe, which was performed over 100 times?

Take the half cab (BFLF) as another example. Worth 550 points, it was performed just once for every three half twists (BFLB), valued at 750. While it may be true that landing in the back is more difficult than taking off in the back, does that justify a 200-point gap? If so, why are half twists so common—and half cabs so rare?

Innovation Without Reward

In early 2024, the IWWF approved four new flips, including Clarens Lavau’s “Super Half Twist” and Poland’s “UFO.” But even with official approval, no one expects them to appear in major tournaments.

Poland’s “Matrix”—a frontflip with a ski-line 540 from the back position—was awarded 950 points. That’s just 150 more than a basic frontflip, and identical in value to the established super-mobe-five.

“There’s a point where you go, well, the slam it takes to learn this trick is just not going to be worth the extra 50 points,” said Poland. “I was trying to do a super-mobe-seven—a backflip 720 over the rope—but there’s not much point because they’ve made it very clear no trick can be worth more than 1,000 points.”

The scoring ceiling isn’t just discouraging; it’s actively stifling innovation.

“I tried three of them,” Poland added, “and they were the worst crashes of my life. I was like, ‘I’m never gonna try that again.’”

Without a meaningful scoring incentive, tricks like the Matrix may never make it into competition. Even Poland, one of the sport’s most creative skiers, is reconsidering the cost.

“You’re limiting creativity and progression,” said Winter. “Do we want to see the same runs forever—just a bit faster?”

A System Stuck in Neutral

The IWWF knows the problem exists. In a memo last year, Council Chair Candido Moz urged the Tricks Working Group to bring forward point values that better reflect “true difficulty levels.”

But attempts at reform have stalled for years.

“The skiers could never agree on point values,” Moz has explained. “So IWWF never received a proposal.”

That may change this September. A restructured Tricks Working Group, which includes Poland as a member, is expected to present formal recommendations during the World Championships in Recetto.

Time for a Reset?

Poland is done waiting. “In my opinion, [the current system] is crippling trick and limiting the athletes,” he said. He plans to stay vocal in the lead-up to Recetto.

Winter sees trick skiing as the discipline with the most untapped potential. “Right now, it’s just not reaching it,” he said. “But it could.”

The current system rewards repetition and safety. A modernized score table—one that truly values difficulty and risk—could transform the sport overnight.

“You’ve got to blow it up to build it up,” said Wilson.

The World Championships run August 27–31 in Recetto, Italy. A formal review of trick point proposals is expected to take place at the IWWF Water Ski Council meeting during the event.

Ski Nautique | Nautique Boats

A House Divided: Nautique Splits from the Pro Tour

Articles

A house divided: Nautique splits from the Waterski Pro Tour

Ski Nautique | Nautique Boats

Image: Nautique Boats

By Jack Burden

On a flawless summer morning, with water so flat it blurs the line between lake and sky, some of the world’s best slalom skiers wait their turn. They stretch, limber up, and ready themselves to launch down a course they know as intimately as their own signatures. The cameras roll. The engine’s roar cuts clean through the still air. From a distance, professional water skiing appears unshaken.

But beneath the polish, the sport stands once again on uncertain footing.

Fractured tours, softening prize purses, splintered sponsorships—and a question as old as the slalom course itself: who, exactly, is steering water skiing’s future?

This winter, as tournament schedules for another pro season locked into place, Nautique—the boat manufacturer as synonymous with waterskiing as Wilson is with tennis—quietly severed its final ties with the Waterski Pro Tour for 2025. On paper, it was a footnote. In practice, it was an earthquake.

This is the equivalent of Wimbledon quietly pulling out of the ATP Tour. Or if Augusta told the PGA: We’re good on our own this year, thanks.

Since its inception in 2021, the Pro Tour has been professional skiing’s most unifying force. Born out of pandemic-era recalibration, it bundled previously disconnected events into a coherent narrative, raising prize purses and driving a resurgence of fan interest. It created a season-long arc, elevating once-forgotten stops into destination tournaments. And for a few glorious seasons, the fractured sport of competitive skiing looked, briefly, like a professional tour again.

Nautique’s quiet exit cracks that illusion.

The writing, truthfully, has been on the wall for some time. Nautique is the primary sponsor of water skiing’s two longest-running and highest-paying events—the Moomba Masters and the U.S. Masters—both widely regarded as the sport’s equivalent of Majors. Nautique also serves as the primary organizer of the latter tournament. After its inclusion in the Pro Tour’s inaugural season in 2021, Nautique pulled the Masters out of the Tour. Then, when Moomba returned post-COVID in 2022, they too declined to participate.

A third blow came when the Botaski ProAm, a newer but increasingly important event, stepped away in 2023 after a single season of Pro Tour involvement. Another Nautique-sponsored event, Botaski’s withdrawal reinforced a trend.

Now in 2025, after four seasons as a fixture on the Pro Tour, the California ProAm will join the ranks of the two majors and Botaski on the sidelines. And just like that, the longest-running event on the Pro Tour is relegated to a sideshow—no longer relevant to any season-long narrative, unless one considers qualifying for the U.S. Masters to be the be-all and end-all of the water ski season.

Their reasoning? Officially muted. Representatives from Nautique Boats declined requests for an interview for this article.

It’s difficult—even when granting Nautique every benefit of the doubt—to formulate a coherent rationale for their aversion to the Pro Tour. Let’s be clear: it costs nothing for an event to be included on the Waterski Pro Tour. The perks are numerous—pre- and post-event marketing, social media exposure, highlight packages, and, most importantly, inclusion in an absorbing season-long narrative that gives any result the potential for broader ramifications.

Sure, there’s a reasonable argument for the majors to stay independent. They have the history, they have the brand. Arguably, the Masters’ decision to remain separate from the fledgling Coors Light Water Ski Tour in the 1980s saved it from the fate of other legacy tournaments like the California International Cup and the Tournament of Champions—both subsumed into the Tour brand and ultimately victims of the organization’s financial woes.

But the Waterski Pro Tour is just that: a brand name. It doesn’t take over existing tournaments. It supports them. It adds value. It’s hard to see how a tournament like the Botaski ProAm—begun as a small, men’s-only slalom event in 2018 and since expanded to include women and, more recently, tricks—has a brand strong enough to stand entirely apart. Surely the season-long narrative and visibility the Pro Tour brings is a value-add, not a liability.

The closest thing to a justification is a vision, hinted at publicly by Nautique insider Matt Rini during last year’s California ProAm: the idea of a Nautique-backed international circuit.

“Nautique is all about three-event—building a three-event boat,” he said. “The goal is to have four [tournaments], each featuring all three events, in a season. There’s no jump at Botaski, but they want to add it there. And they want tricks here [in California]. That would be amazing.”

That vision has been echoed before by Brian Sullivan, Nautique’s VP of Marketing, who once described the company’s ambition as “wanting to keep doing bigger and better events, to keep growing the sport—that’s one of our main goals.”

But even that ambition raises questions—chief among them, whether a parallel circuit run by a single manufacturer can truly grow the sport, or simply divide it further.

Nautique’s recent maneuvers, however, haven’t occurred in a vacuum. Taken alongside a string of recent controversies, they appear less like isolated strategic pivots and more like part of a broader pattern: control, consolidation, and increasingly contentious relations with athletes.

In recent years, the company has faced criticism for its rigid gatekeeping of the Masters — from Byzantine qualification procedures to the banning of a world champion for alleged unsportsmanlike conduct — as well as the contentious dismissals of top athletes like Jonathan Travers, Jacinta Carroll, and Patricio Font, raising concerns about its approach to athlete management.

Seen in that light, Nautique’s retreat from the Pro Tour looks less like a routine reshuffle and more like a tightening grip on the sport’s levers of power.

If so, they are not the first to try.

Competing pro tours have been attempted before in water skiing. Rarely with much success. In 1987, the American Water Ski Association launched the short-lived U.S. Grand Prix of Water Skiing to compete with the Coors Light Water Ski Tour. Then again, more dramatically, in 1990, Camille Duvall and a cadre of frustrated skiers attempted a coup. They launched an upstart circuit promising more prize money, athlete control, and safer skiing conditions.

For one turbulent season, skiing had two competing tours: the rebel PAWS circuit and the establishment Michelob Dry Tour. Sherri Slone famously won two pro jump titles on the same day.

The experiment imploded. Both tours crumbled under legal battles, sponsor fatigue, and logistical overload. By 1991, PAWS was gone. The old tour limped along, wounded but intact. The sport never fully recovered its eighties-era swagger.

Today, no one has openly declared “war” like Duvall once did. But Nautique’s move—alongside an already splintered calendar featuring the WWS Overall Tour and standalone events—feels eerily like history tightening its rope again.

On paper, these should be boom times. Each of the past three seasons has brought the highest prize purses in over 15 years. The gender pay gap has shrunk dramatically, from 60 cents on the dollar to near parity. The Waterski Broadcasting Company streams nearly every pro event, in crisp HD, for free. Fans can sit in their living rooms and watch the world’s best almost every weekend.

But peel back the webcast polish and cracks show.

The Swiss Pro Slalom—the sport’s most-watched webcast annually—has just been demoted from the Pro Tour after failing to secure adequate sponsorship. Jumping, once the marquee discipline of water skiing, has seen prize money slashed by more than half in the last decade. Even trick skiing, despite a recent resurgence on the water, still lags far behind its 2000s heyday in financial support.

For the first time since 2020, when the global pandemic shuttered nearly all events, professional prize purses are forecast to decline in 2025.

Even Nate Smith, the most dominant slalom skier of his generation, has quietly taken on a “real job” in recent years to stay afloat. Coaching gigs and benevolent parents remain as crucial as gate setups at 41 off.

It begs the question: can the sport really sustain another professional circuit? Can a niche sport like water skiing afford this level of fragmentation?

The cameras are still rolling. The rope still hangs off the pylon. The skiers will ski. And for now, the sport holds together—if just barely.

But history in this sport doesn’t repeat itself quietly. Every time water skiing has splintered before, it’s taken years to recover. Some fractures have never fully healed.

Now, both sides risk losing something vital.

Nautique’s events—the crown jewels of professional skiing—draw their power from prestige, history, and the feeling that they are the center of the sport’s universe. Walling them off too far from the broader narrative risks dulling their shine, turning majors into outliers.

At the same time, the Pro Tour loses critical legitimacy without the weight of the sport’s longest-standing events on its calendar. Fans, athletes, and sponsors are left navigating a fragmented landscape—unsure which path truly leads to the sport’s future.

The truth is, no one wins a fractured season.

Not Nautique. Not the Tour. Not the athletes. Not the fans.

If the sport is to move forward, it needs everyone—manufacturers, organizers, and athletes—rowing in the same direction again.

There’s still time to course-correct.

Hopefully, someone picks up the rope.

“It’s Just Skiing”: Carter Eaton’s Cross-Country Crusade to Change the Sport

YouTube Series Captures the Highs and Lows of Pro Water Skiing

News

Carter Eaton’s It’s Just Skiing captures the highs and lows of professional water skiing

“It’s Just Skiing”: Carter Eaton’s Cross-Country Crusade to Change the Sport

Image: @arthur_sayanoff

By Jack Burden

In a sport obsessed with buoys, boat settings, and breaking 41 off, Carter Eaton is chasing something else entirely.

He’s not a world champion. Not a 10.25m regular. Not backed by a major boat brand. But Eaton — an Alaskan-born skier with a DIY van and a camera in hand — is quietly becoming one of the most compelling characters in professional water skiing.

His YouTube series, It’s Just Skiing, now 17 episodes deep, documents an audacious, improbable mission: compete in every pro slalom tournament he qualifies for in 2025. From a distance, it looks like a feel-good side quest. Up close, it’s a test of endurance — mental, physical, emotional — offering a raw, unfiltered look at what it really takes to chase a professional dream in a sport that barely pays.

You see the breakdowns. The van repairs. The homesickness. The missed openers. The joy of running 39 for the first time in a record tournament. And yes, the self-doubt — the kind few athletes show publicly, let alone on camera.

“I’ve been on the road since April… I’m around the world alone… I wanted to go to Morocco so bad,” Eaton confesses in a recent video. “But you know what? Ski better. If you ski good enough, you get to go to every tournament.”

That kind of honesty is rare in water skiing — a sport so tight-knit it often feels allergic to vulnerability. Eaton is the antidote.

His recent uploads span much of the European leg of the season — from Monaco to Dommartin — with pit stops at the Colosseum, some of Europe’s most scenic ski sites, and a few late-night monologues that wouldn’t feel out of place in a sports documentary. In one of the series’ most striking moments, after a rough tournament, Eaton delivers this:

“I’m going to fail and fail and fail, but I’m going to succeed. The skiing is only a little bit of that success… I want to show the world what this sport is. But nothing worthwhile has ever been easy.”

That mantra underpins the entire project. Eaton isn’t just skiing for himself. He’s trying to prove that water skiing — despite its barriers, niche audience, and lack of mainstream polish — can still be captivating. That it deserves to be seen. That it doesn’t have to be perfect to be powerful.

In a landscape where the spotlight mostly shines on winners, Eaton’s story resonates for a different reason: he’s doing what many wish they could. Not winning it all. Not turning a profit. But showing up anyway. Chasing the dream.

That may not make him a “pro” in the traditional sense. But in 2025, being a professional athlete is about more than just scores and sponsorships. It’s about connection. Storytelling. Having a voice.

Winning is only enough in a handful of sports — and water skiing isn’t one of them. Even top athletes in much larger sports often only scrape by, prize money split between travel expenses and training costs. The ones who truly thrive are the ones who build something more: a brand, a following, a reason for fans — and sponsors — to care.

It’s why names like Joel Poland, Neilly Ross, and Freddie Winter resonate far beyond their results. Yes, they’re elite competitors. But their influence doesn’t come solely from buoy counts. Poland and Ross have cultivated huge social media followings, turning short-form edits and behind-the-scenes clips into brand assets. Winter, meanwhile, is seemingly everywhere — from podcasts to TWBC interviews to mushroom-based elixir docuseries.

And then there’s the logical next step: creators like Marcus Brown and Rob Hazelwood, who’ve realized that content creation isn’t just a side hustle. It’s the job. They’re telling stories, shaping narratives, and showing fans what life in this sport actually looks like — beyond the scoreboard.

And then there’s Eaton. No entourage. No script. Just a skier with a dream, a camera, and something to prove — not just to the world, but to himself.

“There are other people that will change the sport forever with how good they are at skiing. That won’t be me,” he says. “But I’m going to change the sport forever.”

Maybe that’s hyperbole. Maybe not. Either way, the view count is rising. The story is unfolding. And we’re watching.

Because at its heart, this isn’t just about results. It’s about believing that the journey — rough, weird, unfinished — is worth sharing.

Win or lose. Succeed or fail. After all — it’s just skiing.

Brittany Greenwood Wharton jumps at the LA Night Jam

Why the LA Night Jam Left Us in the Dark — Literally and Digitally

Articles

Why the LA Night Jam left us in the dark — literally and digitally

Brittany Greenwood Wharton jumps at the LA Night Jam

Image: @lanightjam

By Jack Burden

Last weekend, some of the world’s best jumpers went soaring under the lights in Zachary, Louisiana. The LA Night Jam had it all: a packed shoreline, festival energy, world champions, rising stars, and Waterski Pro Tour points on the line.

But unless you were there in person, you didn’t see a second of it.

There was no webcast. No slo-mo replays. No expert commentary. No drone shots capturing heroic flight. Just the dry final results, posted to an anachronistic website after the spray had settled—black-and-white numbers standing in for what was, by all accounts, one of the most electric nights of the season.

And for diehard fans like me, that felt like a gut punch.

In the post-COVID era, we’ve grown used to watching every pro event live, for free, from anywhere in the world. The quality of these broadcasts has never been better, thanks in large part to The Waterski Broadcasting Company (TWBC). But cracks are starting to show in that model—and there’s a quiet, potentially growing shift away from relying on livestreams to carry the weight of an event.

Two of the four stops on the 2024 WWS Overall Tour were not broadcast, including the Canada Cup, which doubled as a Waterski Pro Tour jump stop and delivered some of the season’s most thrilling competition. The Fungliss ProAm, with the richest men’s slalom purse of the year, also eschewed a webcast.

Why? Because streaming costs money. And despite loyal viewership, the audience hasn’t really grown. TWBC’s YouTube views have plateaued since 2020. The downgrade of the Swiss Pro Slalom—still the most-watched water ski webcast every year—drives the point home: if the sport’s most visible livestream can’t generate enough sponsor revenue to stay on tour, something’s broken.

Still, many—including me—believe high-quality webcasts are a worthwhile investment. Maybe the audience isn’t there yet. But what better vehicle exists to grow the sport long-term? Who else is grinding to tell skiing’s story with the polish and persistence of TWBC?

That doesn’t mean, though, that every tournament needs to look the same.

The LA Night Jam reminds us there’s another way—one rooted in the past, but maybe just as vital to the future.

Rather than catering to a global digital audience, LA Night Jam pours its resources into the on-site experience. It’s a deliberate throwback—a water ski festival, as event coordinator Tucker Johnson described it in a local TV interview: “It’s fun for the whole family… a pro tournament set up with tons of events around it as well.”

There are trick exhibitions. Slalom head-to-heads. Freestyle skiers. Adorable kids on combos. In one memorable stunt, someone even barefooted out of a hot air balloon. It’s all designed to dazzle the crowd—many of whom arrive knowing nothing about water skiing and leave wanting more.

The funding model reflects that philosophy. Instead of relying on industry sponsors trying to reach a global audience, the event is backed by local businesses. Their website, perhaps vindictively, notes that the “event is not sponsored by MasterCraft Boat Co.”—a nod to the departure of their former headline sponsor and the pivot toward a community-first approach. It’s a stark contrast to the traditional, industry-funded model.

Here, the crowd isn’t just a backdrop. It’s the point.

And LA Night Jam isn’t alone. The 2024 WWS Canada Cup followed a similar formula: local crowd, local sponsors, no webcast. We’ve also praised the King of Darkness for its festival-like atmosphere and crowd engagement—though that event still pairs its in-person spectacle with a top-shelf livestream.

These formats don’t just recycle the same core audience—they expand it. They draw in new families, new eyeballs, and potentially new sponsors. Yes, physical crowds come with constraints—parking, logistics, capacity. But they offer something livestreams haven’t cracked yet: the ability to convert the curious into the committed.

As reigning world champion Freddie Winter put it recently on the TWBC podcast: “We shouldn’t just be skiing in backyard tournaments… getting in front of people is also fantastic.”

Back when waterskiing was booming, it had both—crowds and broadcasts. Passion and reach.

So maybe it’s not about choosing one or the other. Maybe it’s about trying everything, everywhere, all at once. Because if there’s one thing the sport can’t afford right now, it’s to put all its eggs in one basket.

It’s become cliché to quote the line about insanity being doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. But it’s worth reflecting on. TWBC has poured heart and soul into their livestreams. And while their numbers are respectable, they haven’t meaningfully grown in five years. Meanwhile, their side projects like The Unknown Sport of Waterskiing and The Rise of Waterskiing arguably have the greatest potential of breaking through to new audiences.

At the same time, LA Night Jam and others like it are bringing fresh energy, new money, and new eyeballs into the sport—and paying athletes in the process.

With only five pro jump events on the 2025 calendar, every one counts. The fact that LA Night Jam delivered a full purse without a webcast isn’t a failure—it’s a sign of creativity and resilience.

So maybe the real takeaway is this: not everything in waterskiing needs to be built for people like me. Sometimes the best thing we can do for the sport is reach someone who’s never seen it before. Ideally, yes, we’d have both—a packed shoreline and a global livestream. But if resources are limited, I’m glad events are experimenting.

Throw enough at the wall, and something might just stick.

The future of water skiing won’t come from clinging to one tournament model. It will come from daring to try new ways to bring the sport to life.

If that means leaving some fans in the dark—so be it. But if it means lighting up a new generation, then the gamble is worth it.

Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly implied that the Lake 38 ProAm had shifted away from TWBC for budget reasons. In fact, TWBC was the organizers’ first choice, but was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts.

Masters Waterski & Wakeboard Tournament qualification criteria continues to raise eyebrows

Masters Invites Finalized: So Why Are There Empty Spots?

News

Masters invites finalized: So why are there empty spots?

Masters Waterski & Wakeboard Tournament qualification criteria continues to raise eyebrows

Image: pinemountain.org

By Jack Burden

The second Masters Qualifier wrapped last weekend at Championship Ski Lake in Auburndale, Florida, sending a baker’s dozen of the sport’s top athletes to Callaway Gardens later this month. Yet despite the roster of world-class names advancing, quiet concerns about the qualification system continue to simmer.

Dane Mechler, Freddie Winter, Allie Nicholson, Alexandra Garcia, and Neilly Ross secured berths in slalom; Dorien Llewellyn, Adam Pickos, Kennedy Hansen, and Aliaksandra Danishueskaya punched their tickets in tricks; while Emile Ritter, Igor Morozov, Aaliyah Yoong Hanifah, and Valentina Gonzalez qualified in jump.

All elite skiers, all deserving. And yet, in four of the six events contested, the cut line was barely there.

In men’s tricks and women’s jump, every entrant advanced. In women’s slalom and men’s jump, all but one skier qualified. In some disciplines, simply paying the entry fee and showing up was enough to earn a Masters spot.

It’s an awkward look for a tournament that bills itself as “the most prestigious event of the year.” And it’s not a one-off—it reflects a recurring pattern within the current qualification system.

While Masters organizers have long prioritized a high standard of excellence, their bespoke and exacting qualification pathway has, perhaps unintentionally, increased the likelihood of unusually small fields and unclaimed invites—even in disciplines with deep talent pools.

By contrast, virtually every other professional tournament—including the growing slate of Waterski Pro Tour stops—leans on established systems like the Waterski Pro Tour standings, the IWWF performance-based ranking lists, or some combination of the two to shape fields. The Masters’ decision to chart its own course has left rosters thinner than the sport’s current depth suggests.

Nowhere is this more visible than in men’s tricks. Once considered a sleepy corner of tournament skiing, men’s tricks is now arguably the sport’s hottest discipline, thanks to a recent flurry of world record activity, rising prize purses, and a wave of emerging talent. Yet despite that momentum, the Masters field remains thin.

Stringent entry criteria for the qualifiers required male trickers to have averaged over 11,000 points in world ranking competition over the past 12 months—a benchmark met by only 12 skiers worldwide. Of those, four are still juniors; one, the defending champion Martin Labra, is injured; another, Danylo Filchenko, has rarely left Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion; and one more, Martin Kolman, did not attend. The result: only seven eligible and willing competitors across two qualifiers, and at least one invite expected to go unclaimed.

For comparison, the recently concluded Swiss Pro Tricks tournament drew 16 male entrants—more than double the presumed Masters field—despite offering less than a third of the prize money. The appetite among athletes is clear; the bottleneck lies in the qualification process.

The Masters’ tightly gated system seems increasingly out of step with the sport’s evolving landscape. While trick skiing pushes forward—with new pro events in Morocco, Monaco, and Portugal, rising stars breaking records, and social media drawing fresh audiences—the Masters remains constrained by criteria that no longer fully reflect that growth.

The Masters still carries immense cachet. It boasts water skiing’s richest prize purse and an iconic venue that has crowned champions since 1959. But prestige, hard-earned, can be fragile. Keeping pace with the sport’s expanding depth will be key to preserving that legacy.